OurTupelo

Mississippi Today journalists Bobby Harrison, Geoff Pender and Adam Ganucheau are joined by WJTV reporter Thao Ta to break down what happened — and what didn’t — during the 2021 legislative session.

Listen here:

The post Podcast: What happened (and didn’t) in the 2021 legislative session appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The just-completed 2021 legislative session might be remembered more for bills that were not passed than for those that were.

While having little in common, it is fair to say that both Medicaid expansion to cover primarily the working poor and House Speaker’s Philip Gunn’s Tax Freedom Act would have been among the most impactful legislation for the state of Mississippi in decades if they had passed. Whether that impact would be beneficial or detrimental, of course, like most things, would be determined over time.

Neither passed.

The Tax Freedom Act, authored by Gunn and two of his top lieutenants, Speaker Pro Tem Jason White of West and Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar of Senatobia, passed the House but did not make it out of committee in the Senate.

The proposal would have phased out the state’s income tax, eventually reduced the grocery tax from 7% to 3.5% and increased the sales tax on most other retail items from 7% to 9.5%. In addition, taxes on multiple big-ticket items, such as vehicles and airplanes that have a sales tax rate of 5% or less, would also be increased by 2.5% on each dollar expended on those items.

Like Gunn’s tax plan, the proposal to expand Medicaid would be significant — perhaps the most significant change to the state’s health care system since Mississippi opted into the original Medicaid health care program in 1969. Incidentally, at the time Mississippi was one of the last states to opt into the Medicaid program, a federal-state cooperative. Proving that history does repeat itself, Mississippi is now among the final 12 states not participating in the expansion. Under the original program, poor children, poor pregnant women, disabled people and a segment of the elderly population are eligible for Medicaid.

With the expansion of Medicaid, up to 300,000 people — primarily the working poor — would be eligible for health care coverage. And importantly, the large bulk of the cost of the expansion would be paid by the federal government. Some opponents of expansion, such as Gunn, say the state cannot afford it, are staunchly opposed and show no indication of changing their mind. Other people, though, argue that the expansion will result in an increase in funds for the state treasury. This is especially true, they say, since the American Rescue Plan recently passed by Congress would provide the state of Mississippi an additional $600 million or more over a two-year period just for expanding Medicaid.

Gunn’s tax swap legislation was killed when the Senate leadership opted not to bring it for consideration. The Medicaid expansion legislation was killed by opposition from the legislative leaders who opted to not even bring the legislation up for consideration in committee.

Democrats, who are in a distinct minority in both the House and Senate, did force a vote on the issue of Medicaid expansion before the full membership of both chambers, but with opposition from Republicans leaders there was no chance the proposal would pass.

“It was a hail Mary,” said Rep. Zakiya Summers, the Democrat from Jackson who offered the proposal on Medicaid expansion to the House, mimicking a throwing motion and comparing herself jokingly to retiring New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

While both Medicaid expansion and the tax swap bills are dead for the 2021 session, that does not mean the issues are going away.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, spurred at least in part by the speaker’s legislation, said the Senate Finance Committee will study the state’s tax structure during the coming months in advance of the beginning of the 2022 session in January. Lamar, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he anticipates that his committee will participate with the Senate in those hearings.

“We will do everything we can to ensure the legislation is passed,” Lamar said recently.

Hosemann also said the Senate will study the issue of health care access during the coming months. While he did not specifically say that the study would include Medicaid expansion, he did say that “a moniker” should not prevent a solution from being considered because “if you really look at it, you may not be against that. You may just be against some moniker.”

Legislators did pass some significant bills during the 2021 session, such as providing teachers with a $1,000 per year raise and providing money for a modest pay raise for state employees and an even more modest raise for university and community college staff.

But the issues that were most prevalent and possibly impactful during the 2021 session — taxes and Medicaid expansion — could still be around in 2022.

READ MORE: The 2021 Mississippi legislative session sputters to a close.

The post The 2021 session might be remembered most for what didn’t happen appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The “Underreported and Underpunished” series started with a simple question: Had the COVID-19 pandemic fueled a rise in intimate partner violence, and did it further isolate victims or cause more victims to seek help?

When trying to answer that question, I was surprised by the sheer lack of data we have on domestic violence crimes in Mississippi. Advocates and others confirmed this, telling stories of how they cobbled together newspaper reports to track and find details about individual domestic, or interpersonal, violence homicides.

Shelters collect their own court data, and the crime reporting system being used by most law enforcement agencies does not take into account things like the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Despite the introduction of a new system that would track those factors, very few law enforcement agencies are using it.

To further complicate the issue, domestic violence crimes are still sometimes being charged otherwise: simple assault, disturbing the peace and others that don’t tell the complete story of what happened — or the abuser’s propensity for future violence.

And, importantly, we remain one of five states in the nation that doesn’t conduct a domestic violence fatality review, or a review of deaths caused by domestic violence for the purpose of preventing future deaths.

The problem, as I saw it, is that before you can solve or fix an issue, you must understand it. I wondered how anyone was fixing anything in Mississippi, which consistently ranks in the top 20 states in the number of women killed by men, if we don’t have a good grasp on the subject.

I interviewed dozens of shelter directors, advocates and victims, in addition to attorneys, law enforcement officers, lawmakers, federal officials, and even national experts who shared practices that made a difference in other places around the country. I attended and continue to attend proceedings in municipal courtrooms, the courtrooms that handle the majority of domestic violence cases. I also requested data about felony domestic violence crimes from the courts that we are still analyzing.

The result is the ongoing series, which looks not only at laws and policies but tells the stories of real Mississippians who found themselves in an abusive relationship, in addition to the stories of those who are affected by a parent, friend or family member’s experience with domestic violence.

One in three women and one in four men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. That means this is an issue that affects a lot of people — and if it’s impacted you in some way, I want to hear your story.

I once heard that the greatest allies of domestic violence, along with sexual assault, are silence and darkness. These actions, and the power they have over victims, thrive in the shadows.

This is my attempt to bring them to light. I hope you’ll spend some time reading this ongoing series, and stay tuned for future stories. As always, reach out to me any time at kroyals@mississippitoday.org.

The post How we’re reporting our series on domestic violence appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippians could have the final say on whether they should have the same early voting opportunities as voters do in 44 other states and the District of Columbia.

An initiative was filed Thursday with Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office to place on the election ballot a proposal to allow a minimum of 10 days of early voting, including two Saturdays, before each election. Supporters of the initiative will have to garner the signatures of roughly 100,000 registered Mississippi voters — 12% of the total from the last governor’s election — during a year’s time to place the proposal on the ballot. One-fourth of the required number of signatures must come from each of the four U.S. House districts.

Rep. Hester Jackson McCray, D-Horn Lake, said she is sponsoring the initiative in response to requests for early voting from her constituents and because of the long lines she witnessed in the 2020 presidential election and when she campaigned for election in 2019 her home county of DeSoto.

“Voting should not be difficult,” said McCray, the first African American woman elected to the Legislature from DeSoto County. “Long lines discourage voting.”

READ MORE: Despite dramatic electoral and financial setbacks, Hester Jackson-McCray makes legislative history

McCray said she was trying to pass the initiative because the Legislature has refused to act on the issue and because Gov. Tate Reeves has said he would veto any early voting legislation passed by the Legislature. Mississippi is one of six states not to have no excuse early voting.

Early voting and mail-in voting became a partisan issue this past year in large part because former Republican President Donald Trump criticized early voting, and particularly voting by mail.

The proposed initiative would not address the issue of voting by mail. It would allow people to vote early on a voting machine just as they would on Election Day. The number of early voting sites would be determined by the population size of the county or municipality.

Under the initiative plan, each county would have one early voting site at the circuit clerk’s office for state, national and county elections. All municipalities would have a site normally at the city clerk’s office for their elections.

Mississippi has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country. People are supposed to have an excuse, such as being elderly, disabled or away from home on election day to vote early in Mississippi.

“We want to change our Mississippi Constitution so that our government must give us all enough time to vote,” said Kelly Jacobs, a DeSoto County community activist who wrote the initiative for McCray.

READ MORE: Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn once supported early voting. Why did they retreat during COVID-19?

Current Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann voiced support for early voting while serving as secretary of state where he oversaw state elections. He then withdrew that support.

But Hosemann indicated Thursday he might not be opposed to considering the enactment of early voting in the state.

Before the issue of garnering the signatures can start, the proposed language regarding the initiative must be approved through a process involving the offices Secretary of State and Attorney General. That process can take about two months.

Jacobs acknowledged the process of gathering the signatures can be difficult and time-consuming. She said the sponsors will be relying on volunteers, and they hope to raise enough funds to hire professional help.

READ MORE: ‘Practices aimed to suppress the vote’: Mississippi is the only state without early voting for all during pandemic

The post Rep. Jackson-McCray, citing legislative inaction, files early voting ballot initiative appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Men’s college basketball moves to the Final Four this weekend. As has been the case all but one time in NCAA history, no Mississippi team is involved.

No surprise there, our teams just weren’t nearly good enough to get that far. In fact, none of our teams were involved in the NCAA Tournament, period. I’ll stop short of saying they just weren’t good enough for that because you could make a case that both Mississippi State and Ole Miss were both good enough to be in the 68-team tournament. That’s especially true when you look at the nine — count ‘em nine — Big Ten teams that did get in. In contrast, six SEC teams were selected and only one from Conference USA.

My take: There long has been a Big Ten bias where NCAA Tournament selections are concerned that’s never been more evident than this year. Again, nine Big Ten teams were awarded bids and four of those were seeded No. 4 or higher, meaning that the selection committee judged four Big Ten teams to be among the best 16 teams in the country. To which I say:

Ha!

Look at the results. Eight of the nine were eliminated on the first weekend of the tournament. Only No. 1 seed Michigan made it to the round of 16 and UCLA, a No. 11 seed, knocked off the Wolverines in the Elite Eight. It wasn’t just that the Big 10 teams lost; it was how they lost. No. 11 seed Michigan State lost to 11-seed UCLA in a First Four game. No. 4 seed Purdue lost to No. 13 seed North Texas in a first-round game. No. 2 seed Ohio State lost to 15-seed Oral Roberts in a first round game. No. 2 seed Iowa was swamped by 15 points by 7-seed Oregon in the second round. No. 10 seed Maryland was crushed by 19 by 2-seed Alabama in the second round. No. 9 seed Wisconsin lost to 1-seed Baylor by 13. No. 1 seed Illinois lost by 13 to Loyola in the second round. In one of the Big 10’s better performances, No. 10 seed Rutgers lost to 2-seed Houston in the second round.

By anyone’s measure, it was a dismal performance by the league clearly judged best in the nation by the NCAA selection committee. Again, only one of nine Big Ten teams made it past the first weekend. In contrast, two (Alabama and Arkansas) of six SEC schools made it to the Sweet 16. And if you want to look at the league most under-valued, that would be the Pac 12. Four of five Pac 12 teams selected made it to the Sweet 16. The Pac 12 had a 13-5 record in NCAA Tournament games, by far the best of the power conferences. UCLA, which finished in fourth place in the Pac 12, is in the Final Four.

Of the Big Ten teams that made the 68-team field, both Maryland and Michigan State had losing conference records (both were 9-11). Meanwhile, Ole Miss (10-8 in the SEC) and Mississippi State (8-10) were both left out of the field. Was the Big Ten that much better than the SEC? Tournament results definitely say otherwise.

Again, the Pac 12 has an even bigger beef among the power conferences. So, probably, does the Big 12, which had a 9-6 record in the NCAA Tournament with seven teams selected. And, as always, many of the non-power conferences were sorely under-valued. Chief among those is probably the American Athletic Conference. AAC teams, thanks to Houston, achieved a 4-1 record in the NCAA Tournament, pretty swell for a league that had only two teams selected. And AAC member Memphis won the NIT, beating Mississippi State in the finals. Should Memphis have been in the NCAA Tournament? Clearly.

Conference USA was badly under-valued as well, which is nothing new. CUSA has become a one-bid league, which usually means somebody really good is left out. North Texas became the fourth CUSA team in the last five NCAA tournaments to win a first-round NCAA game. No other non-power conference league can say that. Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis knows all about that because his Middle Tennessee State teams were two of those CUSA teams that advanced. Davis’s MTSU teams beat No. 5 seed Minnesota in 2017 and No. 2 seed Michigan State in 2018. If they hadn’t won the CUSA Tournament, they would not have made the NCAA Tournament.

Both Louisiana Tech and Rick Stansbury’s Western Kentucky team were NCAA-worthy this year. Tech was 12-4 in the league. Western was 13-3. North Texas, which won the CUSA tourney and got the league’s only NCAA berth, finished 9-5 (tied for fifth) and then defeated Purdue in the first round.

We could go on and on about the bias against non-power conference teams. Oral Roberts, which finished fourth in the Summit League standings, knocked off Ohio State and Florida before losing by two to Arkansas in the Sweet 16. Oral Roberts finished behind South Dakota State, South Dakota, and North Dakota State in the Summit regular season and would not have made the NCAA field if not for a two-point win over South Dakota State and a there-point win over North Dakota State in the Summit League tourney. Bottom line: There are many terrific, non-televised college basketball teams we never hear about until they pull a huge upset in the NCAA Tournament. And there are many, many terrific teams we never hear about, period, because they don’t make the tournament.

The best NCAA team of all? My vote goes to Gonzaga of the all-powerful West Coast Conference. You can color me shocked if Gonzaga doesn’t win it all.

The post As we move to the Final Four, let’s look at obvious NCAA selection bias appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Officers of the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department will attend a mandatory training focusing on the legal and medical components of strangulation in domestic violence and sexual assault cases in May.

The news comes after Mississippi Today’s story about the case of April Tucker, a Lauderdale County woman who was beaten and strangled by her estranged husband Matthew Tucker in December. Law enforcement also believe he killed their 14-year-old son Bryce Tucker, her mother Beverly Fulton and his own grandmother. 

Sheriff’s deputies responded to an incident in October at the Tuckers’ home. April told officers Matthew had strangled and threatened to kill her while holding a knife to her neck. The officers’ incident report documented cuts and bruises on her neck.

Advocates for victims describe strangulation as the “pinnacle” of abuse, and one study has shown it can be a predictor of future violence and lethality.

That day, Matthew was charged with simple domestic violence, a misdemeanor.

The state’s domestic violence law mandates strangulation — and even an attempt to strangle — be considered an aggravating factor, or a felony. But in many cases across Mississippi, abusers aren’t charged with felonies, according to some law enforcement and advocates for domestic violence victims. They say strangulation is considered difficult to prosecute in court.

The issue is a complicated one, said Ward Calhoun, chief deputy of the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department.

“This (training opportunity) came along as a good opportunity because it is a topic that is misunderstood to some degree by everybody,” Calhoun said.

Calhoun said the training is not related to the Tucker case, and the department prioritizes domestic violence-related training regardless.

“It’s good, specialized training about an area that we quite frankly don’t know much about,” he said, noting some of newer officers may have not received much training around the issue at the law enforcement academy.

April’s family members Andrea Goodwin and David Bonner also paid for deputies to attend a webinar earlier this month hosted by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Goodwin said she and her husband have set aside money to help law enforcement get training around domestic violence.

“For our family, a big part of honoring the lives of April, Bryce and Beverly is to do everything we can to prevent more domestic violence deaths,” Goodwin, a longtime friend and coworker of April’s, said. “(They) put themselves in harm’s way every time they respond to a domestic violence call. The least we can do is make sure the funds are there for them to have the best training possible.”

Shalotta Sharp, special projects coordinator for the Mississippi Coalition Against Sexual Assault and a nurse, is hosting the May training in partnership with the Attorney General’s Office. 

“My role is to explain the medical component of strangulation, exactly what happens to the body and dispel the myths about strangulation,” she said, including informing people about delayed medical issues that can arise. 

In her 10 years doing this training, she said many have the common misconception that strangulation presents itself like it does on television.

“People think strangulation is all about the airway, and it actually has more to do with circulation than airway,” she explained.

The training will be hosted at Meridian Community College and will be open to area medical personnel and members of the judicial system, including investigators in the district attorney’s office. There will be four four-hour sessions over the course of two days.

Click here to read Mississippi Today’s “Underreported, Underpunished” series about how the criminal justice system fails domestic violence victims in Mississippi.

The post Lauderdale Co. officers to attend strangulation training following Mississippi Today article appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Legislature’s 2021 session, perhaps fittingly, ended on a miscue Thursday, with the House and Senate having to come in even though they had no real business left to tend because of disagreement between the chambers on whether rules would have allowed them to leave Wednesday.

House Speaker Philip Gunn, who said lawmakers should have been able to leave on Wednesday, even played an April Fools’ practical joke, telling the few members of the House that showed up for the anticlimactic close that there were “more problems over there” in the Senate and lawmakers would have to return Friday.

The session saw frequent disagreement or apparent lack of communication between the GOP House and Senate leadership — and Republican governor — and some major legislation was left on the cutting room floor.

Notably, Gunn’s plan to eliminate the state personal income tax and increase sales taxes — which Gunn has repeatedly called the most important legislation he’s ever dealt with — died without even a hearing in the Senate. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and other Senate leaders said they were caught unaware by the sea-change legislation late in the session and didn’t have time to vet it.

The House killed one of Hosemann’s top-priorities: an overhaul of the state’s economic development incentives used to lure businesses or help them expand.

The Senate GOP expended much energy to pass a legislative-controlled medical marijuana program, an alternative to the program passed by voters in November, or a “backstop” should a legal challenge to the marijuana voter initiative prove successful. The House rejected it.

The House unsuccessfully proposed removing Medicaid from the governor’s authority, without the Senate on board for such a huge policy change. The Senate attempted to take lottery funds from state transportation and give it to local governments, undoing the work of a monumental special session in 2018. The House wasn’t onboard with that major shift.

Numerous other proposals died, or were the subject of intense debate and back-and-forth alterations this session, causing many politicos to question whether the state’s GOP leaders, despite having a Republican supermajority in the House and Senate, can get on the same page.

And it remains to be seen whether Republican Reeves will break out his veto stamp like he did last year — resulting in recriminations from GOP legislative leaders, an unsuccessful legal challenge from Gunn over the governor’s authority and much dead legislation. This included major criminal justice reform to address the state’s prison overcrowding and high incarceration rates, including expansion of parole eligibility that lawmakers passed again this year with hopes it will meet muster with the governor and law enforcement lobbies.

But Gunn and Hosemann on Thursday downplayed such internecine Republican squabbling or apparent lack of communication — although both voiced disappointment over measures the other chamber killed.

Both pointed out that they’ve met every Tuesday this session. They focused on accomplishments, including passage of a $1,000 teacher pay raise and setting a budget without the cuts of past years as state coffers are flush and the economy is percolating. Both proclaimed that members of their respective chambers — Republican and Democrat alike — got along swimmingly this session.

“Like any relationship, they can be improved,” said Hosemann. “That being said, we are in constant communication. I spoke with (Gunn) at least twice yesterday (about ending the session) … The fact that something I champion, like (economic incentives overhaul) didn’t go, or the tax swap didn’t go does not mean they’re out of whack. I think both of those will be considered next year and probably both approved.”

Gunn said: “The lieutenant governor and I meet every Tuesday morning, and we can meet on a moment’s notice, and I have regular conversations with the chief of staff for the governor … All of us communicate when we need to.”

But in their post-session debriefing with press on Thursday, they appeared to diverge on a perennial issue: Whether Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, should expand Medicaid — with the federal government footing most of the bill — to provide health care to hundreds of thousands of working-poor uninsured people and help the state’s struggling hospitals.

“I am not open to Medicaid expansion,” Gunn said. “We cannot afford it, and there are numerous other reasons … Taxpayers cannot afford it.”

Hosemann said: “We have to look in Mississippi at the delivery of health care. That is important.”

Hosemann didn’t say the words “Medicaid expansion,” but indicated he’s open to discussion and will have top Senate leaders studying health care delivery and access issues out of session.

“I certainly don’t want to get bogged down by a moniker — saying I’m against this without looking at something when, if you really look at it, you may not be against that,” Hosemann said. “You may just be against some moniker.”

The post Mississippi legislative session sputters to a close appeared first on Mississippi Today.

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the race to return to normalcy is a numbers game, contingent on vaccinating as many people as possible. And Mississippi is lagging behind.

The state ranks 48th in the U.S. for the percentage of the population that has received at least one dose of vaccine, 42nd in fully vaccinated people and 46th in the percentage of shots used that have been sent to the state by the federal government, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker. 

But State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, in a one-on-one interview with Mississippi Today this week, says these rankings paint an incomplete picture of how Mississippi is performing in its vaccination efforts. The state’s numbers in the CDC tracker are several days behind MSDH’s reporting, an important discrepancy when a few thousand shots can put one state ahead of another. 

These state-by-state rankings also miss the inequities in the national vaccine rollout, Dobbs said.

“We got totally screwed by the federal long-term care program,” he said.

That program tapped pharmacists from Walgreens and CVS to mass vaccinate nursing home residents on-site, but bureaucratic and logistical issues hampered progress and put Mississippi at the back of the line, Dobbs said.

“CVS and Walgreens started us essentially last (of all states), so almost all of our vaccine was sucked up in that thing for three to four weeks,” he said. 

Mississippi allocated 90% of its first 100,000 doses to the program, but instead of immediately going into people’s arms, Dobbs said, they sat in freezers because there wasn’t anyone to administer them. The pharmacies didn’t have enough staff to go around, so they focused on finishing LTC vaccinations in neighboring states like Tennessee and Arkansas first. 

West Virginia was able to distribute its early doses immediately because it didn’t participate in the program. That state instead used dozens of local pharmacies to administer shots, and started vaccinating its LTC residents weeks before most other states.

MAP: Where to get the COVID-19 vaccine in Mississippi

In addition to the delays caused by the pharmacy partnership program, the federal government’s method for allocating vaccine doses has caused inequities between states, Dobbs said. 

Tiberius, the software platform designed to guide the every state’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, was supposed to allocate doses based on a state’s population, but its algorithm for doing so hasn’t been consistent, Dobbs said.

The states with the highest percentages of vaccinated people have all received significantly more vaccines per capita than Mississippi. New Mexico tops the list, with 38% of its population having received at least one dose, but it has also received 76% more doses per 100,000 residents than Mississippi has.

These issues being left out of the narrative around Mississippi’s progress in administering vaccines is why Dobbs thinks a fixation on rankings is unwarranted.

“We just need to reach our objectives… there’s just a lot of things in there that are just not as important and shouldn’t be used to beat up on folks, whether it’s us, Alabama or whoever else,” Dobbs said.

READ MORE: Frequently asked questions about COVID vaccines in Mississippi

The post ‘We got totally screwed’: Dobbs explains why Mississippi trails others in COVID-19 vaccine rollout appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Leaders of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, the agency that oversees the state’s prison system, publicly say COVID-19 vaccines are not mandatory inside prisons and boast the state’s low percentage of prisoners refusing to become inoculated.

But inside the state’s largest prison, people who are hesitant to take vaccines face serious consequences like no visitation rights, no access to work programs and no consideration for movement to different facilities, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today.

Those consequences, paired with little information about the vaccines provided to prisoners by MDOC, are leaving many people in prison feeling confused and coerced into taking vaccines they know little about or don’t trust.

The stakes are especially raised for prisoners since visitation has been postponed since the pandemic began in March 2020.

MDOC began administering COVID-19 vaccines to people in prison on March 19, making Mississippi among the first states to conduct mass vaccinations inside prisons. As of Tuesday, prison officials said they had administered 6,030 first-dose shots of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines across five prisons: the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, South Mississippi Correctional Institution near Leakesville and at two of the state’s private prisons, East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian and Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs.

MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain offered cookies to prisoners in CMCF, the state’s largest prison, after they received a shot in March. Cain said that vaccinations were not mandatory but that the shots are “one of the best tools to protect other inmates from an outbreak coming from outside.”

The press release, which boasted that just 1% of prisoners had refused the vaccine, portrayed a generous tone shared with prisoners regarding whether they should become inoculated.

“We talked to the guys and ladies up front and let them know, ‘Hey, if y’all want to get back to normal and get activities going, visitations, increase our religious, academic and vocational programs, let’s do this,” Ronald King, the superintendent at CMCF, said in the MDOC press release. “And we let them know we got the vaccinations ourselves and told them, ‘Hey guys we took the vaccinations ourselves and everything’s working out fine.’ We want everybody to take the vaccination.”

But King’s tone was not nearly as generous in a document he circulated inside his prison. The document, obtained by Mississippi Today, reads: “In the event an inmate refuses the vaccine this will occur: 1) No visitation; 2) No work or program activities; 3) No participation in any group activities; 4) May require living in a designated unit for separation purposes; 5) Will not be considered for movement to any other facility. Thank you, Ron King.”

An imprisoned activist who goes by the name Brother Khent told Mississippi Today that MDOC has not given people in prison much educational information about the COVID-19 vaccine. Khent, founder of the prison advocacy organization the National PLUS Coalition, said some prisoners feel forced to take the vaccine and agreed to take it just to see their families again when visitation is reinstated. He also said many people in prison do not trust the vaccine.

“I’ve taken mine,” Khent said about receiving the first dose of the vaccine. “But a lot of people are not aware. They’re not educated on any of this type of stuff. When it comes down to these vaccines, they automatically be like, ‘Man, I’m not finna let them people shoot nothing up in me. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.’”

MDOC’s health care provider VitalCore Health Strategies distributed a COVID-19 fact sheet to people in prison, providing basic facts and information about the vaccine, according to a document obtained by Mississippi Today. 

Still, several people in prison and their loved ones told Mississippi Today there is a general lack of understanding about the vaccine, and the strict consequences make them feel forced to take it.

“Only reason I took (the vaccine) is because I want to see my family. I do not trust the vaccine, period. Would have never taken it if I was free,” a man incarcerated in MDOC told Mississippi Today. “Isolated, no visits, (no) job.”

Dr. Marc Stern, an assistant professor of health services at the University of Washington and an expert in correctional health care, warned against such practices. 

“Forcing people or coercing people to get medical treatment should always be the last resort,” Stern said. “Before coercing, you should exhaust non-coercive methods… Non-coercive methods are, first and foremost, education. Providing the information that people need to make a good decision in their own self interest.”

That information can be disseminated through town hall meetings, explaining the risks, benefits and side effects of the vaccine, Stern said. He also specifically mentioned prison officials could distribute informational posters and videos, circulate pamphlets, provide incentives and work with trusted messengers both inside and outside the prison to build trust and knowledge about the vaccine among the prison population.

The Mississippi State Department of Health provided MDOC with 3,500 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in March to begin inoculating prisoners, according to an MDOC press release. MDOC is expected to receive more Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses from the health department soon to continue administering first doses of the shot. The health department may also provide MDOC with “a few thousand” doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which only requires one dose, the department of corrections said.

While MDOC is now inoculating prisoners by administering vaccines to protect them from the coronavirus, the agency is not entirely sure how much the pandemic has impacted the people incarcerated within its system, having tested only a fraction of the prison population since the pandemic began in 2020.

As of March 26, 2021, MDOC’s data, shared with Mississippi Today, shows the agency has tested 3,360 incarcerated people, which revealed 1,397 positive cases of COVID-19 and 1,963 negative tests. This is out of nearly 15,000 people incarcerated at MDOC’s three state prisons, three private prisons and 18 county regional facilities.

MDOC also reports that 23 people in prison died of COVID-19 in the last year, though the agency reported more than 100 incarcerated people died in 2020 alone.

MDOC is also unable to verify how many of their employees, staff and correctional officers, who regularly enter and leave the prison for work, have been vaccinated for COVID-19 because many are vaccinated at other sites and not through MDOC, the agency said.

“Jails and prisons are high-risk locations…being in prison makes it much more likely that you’re going to get infected because it’s hard to keep social distance,” Stern, the correctional health care expert, said. “Ventilation may not be great. Hand hygiene may be challenging. Mask wearing may be challenging. All those things that we’re supposed to do are more difficult in a correctional setting…the people who are in jail and prison are at higher risk for having serious infection because they have a higher concentration, than the general public, with a chronic disease.”

Michael Knight, incarcerated at CMCF in Pearl, was one of the first to receive the vaccine, his wife Lala Knight told Mississippi Today. Michael Knight had recently told his wife he didn’t think he would be vaccinated because he is incarcerated.

“I had happened to ask him like a week before (he received the vaccine) if he had heard anything about them giving the vaccine. He was like, ‘Oh I doubt very seriously they’d give it to us because I’m in prison,’” Lala Knight told Mississippi Today.

She also said her husband previously had COVID-19 in December 2020 while he was jailed in the Madison County Detention Center and said he didn’t feel like jail officials did all they could to protect them from spreading the virus.

“They were all crowded together. There were visibly people coughing, sneezing, you know, looking like they were sick,” Lala Knight said. “It seemed like he might have been in a kind of like an open area…I mean I know he said at one point it seemed like there was 200 people in one spot.”

Lala Knight said her husband opted to take the vaccine to avoid being infected with the virus for a second time and to be able to resume visitation while in prison.

But while many prisoners are apprehensive about receiving the shots, others are grateful, looking forward to visitation and work programs.

LeBarron Chatman, who is incarcerated at South Mississippi Correctional Institution near Leakesville, told his wife Sara Jane Scott that he’s supportive of the vaccine and is willing to take it, Scott told Mississippi Today. Scott said Chatman has pre-existing medical conditions that make him especially susceptible to the coronavirus, including a history of seizures, a brain tumor that has been removed and hypertension.

After multiple vaccination schedule changes at SMCI, Scott said, Chatman received the first dose of the vaccine Wednesday morning.

“It’s very frustrating to be told one thing and have it change three times…I think that (getting the vaccine) is a positive thing that he does, too, even for each other to keep people within their zones safe because none of the other stuff is really going on,” Scott said about MDOC’s sanitation efforts.

Scott is a Gulfport resident and is the founder of the prison advocacy organization The Parchman Project. She said she is fully vaccinated, having already taken both doses of the vaccine, and is looking forward to visiting her husband in prison.

“That’s a bonus,” Scott said. “When we first started hearing that they were going to make sure that anybody incarcerated could get it, (Chatman) was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to get that.’”

Still, other people in prison are not as optimistic and trusting and are refusing to take the vaccine out of fear, exposing themselves to the potential consequences outlined by prison officials.

“I didn’t take it cause it’s nothing wrong with me,” one man incarcerated in MDOC, who said he hasn’t had a visitor since 2007, told Mississippi Today. “I’m not going to take it at all. Not dealing with trust.”

Editor’s note: Several people in this piece are quoted but unnamed or cited using a nickname. All of those people are currently incarcerated within the MDOC system, and they asked that their names not be used out of concern for their safety and privacy. Mississippi Today independently confirmed their identities and statuses of incarceration.

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